TIPS FOR NEW PILATES INSTRUCTORS

I've been teaching Pilates for over five years and at this point I've taught thousands of classes. You're at the beginning of your Pilates teaching journey. Here's what I wish I knew at the start. It takes time to learn. You're not gonna learn the entire Pilates methodology in a few months. It's going to take a long time. I've been teaching for five years and I still learn things every single day. I look back to some of my very first classes that I used to teach and I'm like, oh my god, what was I doing? But that's okay. That's part of the learning process. Everyone starts somewhere and it's totally fine. The next thing is get as much teaching experience as you can, right away. Even if that just means teaching your friends, your family members, doing free classes for people. A lot of teachers don't realize that the hardest part of teaching is not knowing the system, it's being able to communicate it to a room and being able to read a room and adjust accordingly. When I first started teaching, I taught exactly what I prepared and I did not stray from that. Now when I'm teaching, I go into a room and I have an idea of what I'm going to do and I know that I'm going to focus on all the body and all the ranges of movement. But I take each class and adjust it to my students. Number four, and this one's really important. Don't try and be another teacher. Every single teacher is going to have different and unique qualities to them and they bring something different into the Pilates practice. So if you try to replicate someone else's teaching style or something like that, then your clients will see right through that. Just be you in the room and you'll be shocked at how being you translates into a room and your clients just gravitate towards you. And last thing, and I think this is so important and it's like so lost right now is get to know your students. Look around the room, get down on the student's level and ask them how they found this class, where are they from? Like get to know them. Make connection with your students. Those are my things, those are my tips and I hope you can take something from this and let me know if you're a new instructor, what you have questions about in the comments.